"Some of them do." He thinks of their Orlesian contingent, of Brother Jehan, of others who've shown up to his discussions of the Chant to share their thoughts on the Dissonant Verse he held most dear. Often polite, always so adamant (velvet over steel) that the Liberator had been struck from the canon for sound reasons--he was a bit of heathenish folklore, they said; there was no reason to think he'd ever existed at all. "Shartan" was a name the elves of that time used for all their clever tricksters, nothing more than a fabulous tale conjured by an enslaved people. (Poor things.)

"Our last Divine," previous, he means, and tries not to think final--with the shape of the world as it is, that's hard, "Maker hold her close--she brought out an edition of the Chant that had the Dissonant Verses in it, though she didn't go so far as to return them to the canon. Which puts him in a tricky place to discuss--not heresy any longer, but not something one does in polite company. Unless it's a strictly scholarly discussion and not one about sincere belief."

Exactly how happy he is with that (not at all) is clear from his tone, from the way his fingers wind together in his desk, white-knuckled.